Found a Lump on My Cat’s Hind Leg
I wrote about Herb a few days ago and then saw many people had found my site while searching for “found a lump on my cat’s leg.” I am going to expand on what I wrote so this can help other cat owners who have found a bump on their cats leg.
Fourteen years ago Lee found Herb abandoned outside of a subway station. Lee put Herb in his coat and brought him home. Herb had a lot of broken bones, but was after a visit to the vet, he was pieced up and came home to a house with dogs. Herb loved the dogs as soon as he met them. This picture was taken 14 years ago on the day Herb became part of our life.
Two weeks ago, while Lee was petting our cat, Herb and he found a lump on Herb’s back leg. Herb is a Bombay kitty, weighs 9lbs and is pretty active.
Herb is a very sweet cat and looks at Lee with such adoring eyes (like this picture below)
Lee was able to push on the lump a bit and it felt strange. I did not touch it because I assumed it was cancer and I didn’t want it to burst on the inside (which it can do it). I am cutting this post here and posting the picture of the cat leg lumps under the cut because it is kind of gross and you may not want to see unless you have a cat with a lump.
We took Herb to the vet and the veterinarian shaved the area. With the fur gone, we could see the lump was actually two lumps and it didn’t look good. The vet took a x-rays, blood and a sample of the fluid in the lump found on Herb’s leg. Our vet believed that Herb has cancer, but won’t know for sure until he tests the actual mass that was removed. He wanted to amputate the cat’s leg – You can read about that here, but we wanted to remove just the lump.
The following week, we had the lump removed (not his leg – just the lump). The vet removed a good portion of the muscle from Herb’s leg. He also removed a good deal of the skin inside too because he is hoping that he got it all. He warned us that Herb may not be able to walk well and may even drag the leg behind him. We saw Herb was very lethargic and I was a bit worried. (Lee was not worried at all and knew his cat would be fine because his faith is very strong) We drove home and then Lee carried the cat carrier up the stairs. As he got close to the door, Herb started to meow. We brought Herb inside, opened the cage and Herb raced out and jumped on the chair. He wanted to go play with the dog, but we kept him upstairs with a gate over the staircase. All night Herb practiced walking on his leg and in the morning I noticed he developed a walk that looked like he was walking on his tip toes on that leg.
Update: It’s five days after the surgery and Herb is almost all healed. He’s walking and even running a bit. We are grateful that Herb is doing well and is having an easy recovery.
If you have found a lump on your cat’s leg, bring the cat to your vet and see if he can remove it as our vet could.
Hugs,
marlene
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